Constantly learning and striving to be healthier, more imbalance with myself and nature and more sensitive to my needs, the worlds needs as well as in a place where I am able to be present and listen, and absorb the valuable information that is available to me- so that I will be a teacher, a practitioner and role model.

That’s my dream. In less than 9 years I want to be a very healthy 40 year old. Someone who is in control of her life and able to be present and motivated to help herself, those closest to her as well as strangers seeking guidance. I imagine myself to be successful- earn enough money to have a simple, yet comfy and mindful home, money in the bank for any type of emergency, enough money to be able to go on a few trips a year as well as travel around the world participating and giving workshops. I dream of having a work-life balance that will shift from duty to duty throughout the day but always having enough time to honor myself and my physical, emotional and spiritual needs for health and growth. In my dreams I am also sharing my Ayurvedic lifestyle, holistic lifestyle with an inspiring and playful life partner and our 1 or 2 children. I dream of working hard to help others but having limits of the amount of clients I can see in a day, workshops I can attend- because although working hard and helping others is important, so is time floating down rivers with your family, eating properly and mindfully and having time to practice yoga and get enough sleep in your day.

9 years go quick: 9 years ago I had just finished college with my Digital Media Producer diploma, and was working as a graphic designer as well as for myself, making websites and digital content for my clients. I had a dream to travel more- as I had already travelled for 10 months to 3 countries in 2004 and really enjoyed my experience.
I set my mind on that I wanted to travel and I wanted to also travel while working.
3 years later I began my adventure in Brazil… where I was working as the graphic designer on a Canadian book as well as making posters for clients and enjoyed life, beginning to learn how to dance, to surf to teach English… to have confidence again as a solo female traveler.

Now- 9 years later I have been to 28 countries and now my goal is to go to at least 40 countries by the time that I am 40. I still choose traveling as an important part of life, because it’s a great way to know yourself and to know your world, have compassion and understanding for people and their cultures. The media DOES NOT allow you the connection that you can make in person and neither does reading books nor watching movies.

But now I don’t want to just travel to travel.
Travel to party… Travel to go hiking… Travel to eat food… although, of course I still will like to celebrate, party, hike, enjoy in the local cuisine and specialities… I want to travel and study it’s culture, and reflect upon what I see- as everything I see is how I am portray it. It’s just a manifestation of my view…. which I am happy about I suppose, as I am often moved almost to tears recently when I am outside in beautiful nature especially at sunrise and sunset… I often look at people and just smile at their randomness and uniqueness and at the expressions of their Vikrutis and Prakrutis. (Doshic imbalance and Doshic Constitutional Make-up).

BUT FOR NOW: My focus for the next year is to continue to make money for a few more months as well study and then begin to study, surf, yoga and push myself to be my best at living an Ayurvedically inspired and followed lifestyle.

ONE TRACK MIND. I am a high Vata/Pitta person(Vata=Air/Either and Pitta=Fire/Water) I little Kapha (Earth and Water) to me however, of course I do have some and just to to stay true to not depleting this.  I don’t even know if I am more Pitta or Vata, I am So close with both. Sometimes I evaluate myself and I think I have more Pitta but other times more Vata… I think, probably as most of my imbalances are Vata I am Vata/Pitta and have tendencies to over eat spicy food and get intense easily… but I have Vata ideas and ways to express myself more often. As much as I love my life and myself- I hope to alleviate all my Vata imbalances and to increase my Pitta elements so I can finish more projects and have more success while studying in the next 2-3 years. I am able to reflect upon the past 32 days and say that they were not unsuccessful but they also were not successful in what my goals where.

I had wanted to practice Yoga Asana/Pranayama every day, practice daily meditation, do my Kriyas of Tongue Cleansing and Jala Netti every day, eat healthy, ride my bike, visit with friends, not drink more than two drinks in an outing, make a lot of money and save a lot of money. What happened wasn’t terrible… actually it wasn’t terrible at all, but I had a lot of resistance to have a dedicated yoga practice. At work I would also take time to stretch my body, do a few warriors- a downward and upward dogs… but I had no practice where I  gave myself to the movement in clean air and allowed myself to have shavasana afterwards.
I did clean my tongue every day at least twice, I did the Jala netti pot every day, even on my travel day off, for three weeks, I did wake up and have grateful meditation thoughts every day however- often only taking a few seconds and recently beginning to ready internet news and facebook news. (Something I am addicted to and want to change.)
I only went out for food 4 times in a month and aside from eating my Instant re-heat Indian meals that I bought last overhaul, I was eating fresh.
I have lost muscle and flexibility for sure but I am excited today to begin to change this. No more feeling bad (for myself) that I never practiced yoga – I am going to practice every day.

It’s is 21 days until I am suppose to start my next overhaul… over the next 21 days I am going to dedicate an hour at least to my Asanas and Pranayama practice as well as a daily tantric meditation practice. This next two weeks I am also going to dedicate a lot of my time to finishing up previous projects that I already have invested in but have not finished. (Enerchia balls, Essential oil sprays and giving massage treatments to people for practice and donations.)

I am also going to begin my daily blogging exercise about my health.

Todays blog:
Last night I had a hot bath with Eucalpytus and tea tree in my water. I lit candles and incense and followed some tantric guidelines to begin a meditation where I looked at myself in the mirror. I made eye contact with myself and allowed my vision to blur…. to focus on the glowing reflection of the flickering candle flame- within my own pupil. My face transformed into beautiful and not so beautiful images, whenever I was paying attention to the new face infront of me, my own appeared again. I would stop and restart this exercise- relaxing back into the steamy bath in the candle lit room for reflection and to try and relax on the tubs floor. To focus on my breath, breathing from my stomach and allowing the breathe to travel up through my chakras up into the crown of my head and then exhale down the same path. Within the silence of the room -and was seemed to be a calm scene- there was SO MUCH movement within my own mind. Constantly shifting from eye gazing, to breath, to relaxing the in the water, to my physical body and how it looked in the candle light emerging from the water, many thoughts about past events…and from the videos I had watched about African tribes and how they painted themselves daily with chalk and okra and felt beautiful with the lines and dots and designs. That in some tribes the more bird like they were the more attractive the women found them and in other tribes the man who could roll his eyes and had the whitest eyes and teeth was found the most attractive… I tried to follow my lazy eye and to figure out why it was lazy and how I had forgotten about it for a long time. Finally I was exhausted and made my way to bed where I was able to have a solid sleep until 8 this morning- after initially waking up at my normal time of 5… which I SHOULD have gotten up and practice Yoga then, but was unmotivated and stayed into my bed past 9.

About the African tribes. There are many very primitive and natural groups of people still living on this earth today. They don’t questions their rituals or there way of life they don’t have crazy and complicated desires – they are connected with nature, live completely off the land and from being taught my word of mouth. They are beautiful and happy and when there land and people are not being taken, abused and repressed by others with alternative agendas… they are healthy.  They don’t have hang ups about the human body as we do and they also don’t have addictions to all we do…
Imagine life where you just awoke up a dirt floor, to make your simple breakfast, paint yourself, play and work through out the day- working and walking outside with no shoes, no clothes, dancing around a fire, dressing up with colors, paints, feathers and other tribal accessories and being one with your tribe.  IN MY CULTURE- the closest thing I have came across this was at festivals. It’s not a daily lifestyle…. it’s a weekend of fun, it’s a summer time pleasure… and often it involves the use of Psychedelics for a huge percentage of the participants. For the majority of our society people have grown up believing that dancing crazy and freely is something only crazy people or people on drugs do. That dancing for hours and hours to the methodical beats and around fires is only for certain groups of people. These groups of people being Indigenous, Native American, African American, African etc…

They think that taking the time to stretch and breathe and meditate is only for special type of people as well.

That giving yourself a massage and self love- isn’t important.

That not eating meat- is a choice of few, but unreasonable and impossible for themselves.

THERE IS NOTHING BAD with these thoughts or with fears of trying new things or with having limiting beliefs….
We as humans only know what we know and we are products of our environment…. but this is the CRAZY thing, as I have began traveling (and I have A LOT MORE TO LEARN AND TO SEE for sure) my limited beliefs have been challenged… yep, I need to take a step back about many things and actually see if it was true for me.
I do this on a daily basis- even about my own thoughts and perspective on myself.

In 2011, I didn’t know how to move my hips or dance salsa, and now I have danced with hundreds of people from around the world. I am learning how to connect with the earth as I dance, to channel my energy, to trust in others, to be sensual to have fun and to most of all have fun. I am learning how to make eye contact, how to move my hips not just my neck and head. I have danced for days at festivals with dub and trance, I have danced in simple bars and fancy discos in different countries of Latin America. This summer I went out dancing in Mexico City by myself and ended up head banging with a group of ladies, going out to a disco and having to many people wanting to dance with me so that I actually decided to go home haha… In Oaxaca I danced with a man in the square as he taught me a new type of local dance, in the mountains outside of San Miguel de Allende I danced all night the methodical steps of the Huichol people around a fire, In Puerto Rico I enjoyed watching my friends dance class and then going out dancing with him and feeling like I understood the steps. Dancing brings people together.

But well I digress. I need to continue on my day but I wanted to write some of my thoughts out. I am going to be detoxing the next week and as I do- I am sure that I will be detoxing many impurities and also a lot of sadness that has been accumulating in my seat of consciousness for all the devastating events that have happened in the past months.

Today I will be doing a water cleanse.
Tomorrow I will do another cleanse- just need to decide which one
and then I am excited to try a rice cleanse that I just read about in one of my Ayurveda books for a week or so.
Tomorrow I  continue to eat ghee as well as give myself abhyanga snehana every day as I feel although It’s important and I want to see if I can begin doing it for myself. If I can do it- then anyone can.  Really- when it comes to self maintenance I am not very good at it- I get my hair cut maybe 2-3 times a year, I don’t have a practice of necessarily washing my face before bed or upon waking, I don’t normally use soap or body wash in the shower and I usually don’t invest more than 10 minutes on my hair and makeup. I went shopping only a few times in the past year and don’t go to the gym and until recently, really felt uncomfortable looking at myself naked or being in just my bathing suit or clothes that reveal my body. BUT now- I’m learning to love my body… and how to take care of it, and for doing this- I am healthy, have pretty good energy and pretty level headed and generally happy and mellow about the dramas of life. I haven’t had a fight with someone in a very long time, nor went to bed mad at someone or woke up with negative emotions towards anyone or myself. I have been pretty positive even when I am crying while watching depressing videos… I am able to see the good things happening too. So this is my challenge.
Today until Saturday night I will be following certain cleanses and simply rice based diet. (More information on that to come.)
I will practice Yoga every day for at least an hour until October.23 and then hopefully continue at least a 30-45 minute practice EVERY DAY for the rest of the next overhaul which will go until around November 25th- so another month roughly. By the end of that month, I want to have my arm strength and core strength build up again to be able to do a hand stand without wall support.
I will briefly blog every day about my health and hopefully success.

NOW I put it out there… I need to follow up my words with actions.

My body today: Yesterday- I made some interested choices. I woke up at 5:30 on my morning off and got ready to go and take photos of my friends who are pregnant and modeling maternity clothes. I drank a coffee blended with coconut oil, ghee, cardamon, cinnamon, nutmeg and almond milk. Then my friend bought breakfast at A and W (don’t know how to make  a “And” symbol right now on my keyboard.) So ate an omelet and cheese, two pieces of brown toast and hasbrown then in the afternoon I ate some fries and a piece of battered fish some watermelon and pineapple…. then I opened up a bag of all dressed chips… and mindlessly ate them while on my computer and … ate the entire large bag…. then I went for a run with Philly the dog for an hour and well…before bed I had two caps of castor oil in preparation of my cleans and this morning it doesn’t surprise me that I had a solid stool with mucous in it.
The last time I had mucous in my stools was when I took castor oil the day after our last overhaul… so is it that I have a kapha imbalance right now or… castor oil just is good at cleaning out mucous? I would maybe say both- as I did notice that my urine has had mucous in it often the past weeks. I was probably giving myself a Kapha imbalance by not practicing yoga as well as pouring a lot of oil on my food during the day… however, I was wanting to oil my food as I was fearful of having a Vata imbalance- which leaves me spacey and anxious and with trouble sleeping. This overhaul, I would have to admit I slept wonderfully. I sometimes woke up before 5- but always just to go to the bathroom (as I sometimes ate and drank later in the evening) and then went back to sleep.

And now to practice yoga.